Sydney tops international rankings

New South Wales (NSW) Minister for Trade, Tourism and Major Events, Stuart Ayres, and Business Events Sydney (BESydney) CEO, Lyn Lewis-Smith, today announced that Sydney has ranked 1st in Australia, 7th in Asia Pacific and 25th in the world as a business events destination.

"It’s an astounding result to host so many meetings that Sydney has maintained its ranking with the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA),” said Minister Ayres. “Given our convention centre has been a construction site since 2014, these results are a testament to the ingenuity of the city’s businesses and ability to deliver collaborative solutions.” Minister Ayres said BESydney has kept Sydney’s doors open for business fostering collaboration across the city to host these large-scale, strategic conferences in Sydney. At the same time as hosting events, BESydney has been busy securing business for the future. Ms Lewis-Smith confirmed BESydney has secured an enviable list of international events for the State ahead of International Convention Centre Sydney (ICC Sydney) opening in December 2016. “We are proud of our global rankings. We are also extremely proud of how the events we have secured strategically align with NSW strengths, and the impact these will have on industry and community both locally and globally. The NSW Government’s $1.5 billion investment in a new centre for global meetings in the heart of Sydney is a catalyst for broad legacies including trade, investment, knowledge creation and more. “We’ve secured events across some of the most cutting-edge fields in the world to help unlock exciting jobs of the future in Fintech, cloud computing, start-ups, intellectual property, biotechnology, artificial intelligence and more. This includes the major cloud computing event Openstack 2017 announced last week, the world’s biggest annual robotics event RoboCup 2019, and the 2021 FIGO World Congress of Gynecology and Obstetrics.” BESydney has secured events worth more than $420 million in direct expenditure to the State up to 2023, including more than 30 events worth in excess of $220 million to be hosted at ICC Sydney.